Two Arabesques

The suite is one of the very early impressionistic pieces of music, following the French visual art form.

Debussy seems to wander through modes and keys, and achieves evocative scenes throughout both pieces.

His view of a musical arabesque was a line curved in accordance with nature, and with his music he mirrored the celebrations of shapes in nature made by the Art Nouveau artists of the time.

The piece begins with parallelism of triads in first inversion, a composition technique very much used by Debussy and other Impressionists which traces back to the tradition of fauxbourdon.

It is also featured in the 2001 Japanese film All About Lily Chou-Chou along with other works from Debussy.